


In Between the Thin Air and the Unknown

by scribbledmargins



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Era, Emotions Without Plot, First Kiss, M/M, Mutual Pining, Resolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22065487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribbledmargins/pseuds/scribbledmargins
Summary: Nix in love and war
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 7
Kudos: 81





	In Between the Thin Air and the Unknown

**Author's Note:**

> shows up 18 years late with BoB fic. Title from On the Water by Josh Ritter which is a winnix song if I've ever heard one.
> 
> Everything present in this story is from the series canon and fic osmosis.

**I.**

“They’re the best. Don’t you want to be with the best?

Lew can only shrug. He’s not particularly attached to surviving the war. Dying a war hero is as good a way to get out of family obligation as any. 

_Dick_ wants to be with the best. Wants to _be_ the best, and Lew has no doubt looking into his earnest face that that’s exactly what Dick will become.

“Nix.” 

He says it low and private and a little unsure like he's still not sure if Lew is okay with the nickname, “If you’re going to go to war, don't you want to go as the best?” 

“Who says I want to go at all? Maybe I’ll just go to California and ride the desk until you and all the other thrill seekers get this all settled.” 

“No.” Dick says, confident, smiling like he knows a secret. “You didn’t enlist not to go, Lewis.” 

He’s right but Lew won't give him the satisfaction of saying it. Dick seems to know anyway. 

When they part ways after graduation, Dick pulls him into a half hug and whispers low in his ear, 

“I’ll see you at jump training, Nix.”

“Yeah, yeah. So you say.” 

He does want to be the best, but he’s certain he could find a way to do that without jumping out of a plane, maybe without ever even seeing combat. 

Dick shakes his hand one last time before he leaves and draws his own hand back slow, smirking a little bit, smug in the way he only lets slip around Lew. 

“You’ll be there.”

_I want to be wherever you are_.

It’s not a new thought. 

He submits his request for the paratroopers before he leaves for California. 

**II.**

The first time he jumps out of an airplane and lands safely back on Georgia soil he feels brand new. Reborn in a way that no one else has been, save for the other men in that plane. He lays on his back, just staring at the sky, grinning a like a loon until Dick finds him, because of course Dick finds him, drops his helmet to the ground and reaches out a hand to pull Lew to his feet. 

The sight of Dick—laughing and giddy with adrenaline, hair all mussed and glinting brilliant in the sun—knocks him out. 

“Nix.” He says, breathless. “Nix.” 

That’s when Lew realizes he's laughing too, buoyed up by the thrill of his own survival. 

“Fuck. Dick. I feel, god I feel like I could do anything.” 

“Yeah. Yeah I know. Nix, I-“ 

He cuts himself off but Lew can feel the weight behind his gaze, the heavy pull of it, camaraderie and joy and something else that Lew recognizes but hasn't let himself name. The moment stretches and Lew waits for it to break and one of them to walk away.

Until. Until. 

Dick knocks off his helmet and digs the fingers of his left hand into Lew’s hair, tugs just a little bit.He’s still laughing, barely, just huffs of joy in between breaths through the widest smile Lew has ever seen, when he tips forward and for a minute Lew thinks Dick is about to something really fucking crazy but he doesn’t kiss him, just knocks their foreheads together and then stays right there inches from Lew’s face, just breathing. 

There are people all around but it hardly matters. Not one of them is paying any attention, too preoccupied with either staring up at the clouds in shock or whooping and hollering like they just fought God and nature and came out victorious. 

Lew laughs again, grabs Dick by the shoulders and shakes him.

He feels like he’s flying again, like he still hasn’t hit the ground. 

**III.**

He writes three letters the night before they’re meant to hit Normandy and he adds a fourth the night before they actually do. The first three for his parents, his wife, his daughter. And the last for Dick. Lew knows better than most of them exactly what they’re all walking into, but if anyone might make it back, it will be Dick, he thinks. And if not, well. It helps to write it down. 

He doesn’t put everything he wants to into the letter, he can’t, although he supposes that a dead man can’t be dishonorably discharged for deviant tendencies, and he doesn't much care if he brings shame to the name Nixon, but. Dick wouldn’t deserve the fallout.

In the end he settles on just a few lines. 

_Dick,_

_I wanted to take you to Chicago. I wanted to take you everywhere. I’m sorry I won’t get the chance._

_Yours,_

_Nix_

When he gets on the plane he thinks for a wild moment that he should’ve just kissed Dick when he had the chance, back when they were sleeping feet away from each other in barracks, or even just last week in some dark corner in Upottery. Just once, just to know what it felt like. 

After he jumps he doesn’t think about Dick at all, doesn’t have time or room for anything but finding as many men as he can, and getting back to the rendezvous point and not dying. When he does have time to think again, through the haze of exhaustion he tells himself that Dick must be okay, but it doesn’t keep him from scanning every face and body they pass looking for a familiar stance and red hair. When he does see him on the side of the road, what feels like a lifetime later, he’s too tired to lie to himself about what it is he’s feeling, what it is he’s been feeling all along. 

“It’s good to see you.” 

“Yeah,” Dick says, pushing his leg hard against Lew’s, “You too.” 

**IV**.

He goes to find him after they make it to some semblance of a billet, picking through shelled out houses for officer quarters. 

Dick is sharing with Harry but Harry is out taking care of platoon business while Dick is under strict orders to stay off his leg for at least the rest of the night. His leg. God. Lew can’t stop imagining worse than a ricochet off the street. 

He could have died. Christ.

“Let me look at it.” He says as soon as he’s across the threshold. 

“It’s fine Nix.”

“Of course it is. Let me look at it.” 

_Please_, he doesn’t add. _Please, I need to see it for myself_. 

Dick jerks one shoulder in a shrug, acquiesces. He’s sitting on the side of his bed, feet on the ground, map spread across his lap, and not keeping his leg elevated like he was told. The only indication that he doesn’t plan to leave again at any minute is that he’s just in his socks. 

He doesn’t move as Lew crosses to him. If Lew wants to see the wound for himself he’s going to have to be the one to bend. 

He has no choice but to slide to his knees and try not to think about any other reason he might be in this position. He pushes Dicks pant leg half way up his calf, and then peels his sock down slowly to keep from jostling too hard against the wound. When his fingers brush bare skin Dick makes a tiny noise above him. 

“Does this hurt?”

“No.”

He looks up to meet Dicks eyes to make sure he isn’t lying. Dick is looking at him, his eyes wide but not with pain.

Lew turns back looks at the bandage wrapped around the delicate looking bones of Dick’s ankle. It could’ve been so much worse. 

It’s quiet in the room, aside from their breathing. Voices of the men float in from the window but they feel far away. He runs his fingers around the edges of the bandage, gentle as he can be and then he runs them up Dicks calf again, feeling almost reverent. There is still blood under the skin, a heart still working to pump it through. After the last couple of days Lew doubts he’ll ever again take such simple things for granted.

A crushing sense of relief sweeps through him. They are _safe_. 

They are safe and they are here, sitting in this room and just outside there’s the rise and fall of the voices of all the other men who are safe too. And, there just under the relief is a numbing sort of shock at just how many more didn’t make it to this place, didn’t make it to the ground at all. He had always known there would be losses, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things. It’s too much to feel all at once after so much time shutting everything off just to keep moving forward. He curls forward and rests his head against Dicks knee, his hand still loosely wrapped around his ankle. 

“Lew.” Dick breathes. 

He waits for Dick to push him off, to tell him to stop, but the reproach never comes. Instead he feels Dick’s hand, trembling slightly as he slides fingers through Lew’s hair. 

**V.**

He’s the intelligence officer. He gathers intelligence. Intelligence to help win the war and get his men home safe and he cares about that, he does. He cares about the company, about all the companies, about the men he does and doesn’t know, all the American boys he’s watched die screaming, and the ones who died too fast to make a noise at all. He cares. It matters. His job is important. But here’s the thing—something he won’t tell anyone because it’s shameful and a liability in more ways than one—the thing he knows deep in his heart to be true above all else: he’d throw away every bit of intelligence, he’d throw over every man in the goddamn United States Armed Forces if it meant keeping Dick safe forever. If it meant keeping him at all. If Lew was given the choice of Dick versus the rest of the army, he would choose Dick every time. It’s not even a question. 

He knows that given the same choice Dick would give _himself_ up in a heartbeat. And, if given the choice between the whole army or Lewis Nixon, he knows it might tear Dick to pieces but he wouldn’t choose Lew, would not hesitate to put the good of the many ahead of one life. Dick is too good, too noble, and he cares too fucking much. If he has the capacity to act on any kind of selfish impulse Lew has yet to see it and that’s part what makes him such a natural leader.

But.

But Dick let’s him break all sorts of protocol, watches him break and bend rules and says nothing. Let’s Lew call him by his first name regardless of where they each are in regards to rank; always calls him Lew or Nix always, even when they’re in front of enlisted men, a casual intimacy he doesn’t bestow upon many, and none with such frequency. They spend nearly every minute they are able to together, long after they ran out of reasons to do so beyond just enjoying each others company. Runners usually know to look for them together, and he’s heard the men refer them to together in one breath _WintersandNixon _like they’re one entity. Dick is a wonderful commander, all the brass and all the men agree and if it came down to it he’d never put one man above the company but it’s no secret that Lew is his favorite, and Dick has never seemed to give much of a shit about pretending otherwise. More and more, Lew has been thinking that all of it added up means Dick is, in his own way, choosing Lew over everyone else. 

In every way he is able, he chooses Lew every time. 

**VI**.

Dick follows him, still laughing, into the showers and waits just on the other side of the curtain while Lew stands under the freezing water, cursing and shivering. For being the man at fault, Dick has very little sympathy. 

“What are you talking about? If I didn’t feel bad about it I’d just leave you to face the irritation with your tardiness all by your lonesome.” 

“Oh my mistake, you’re a prince among men Captain Winters.” 

They keep going like that, easy and comfortable conversation the whole time he’s in the shower and Lew thinks, _every day, just like this. _Pictures Dick standing at a real sink in a real bathroom, brushing his teeth or maybe shaving while Lew takes his time under a real shower

He shakes it off. They need some time apart, that’s all. 

**VII**.

“Sink wants me to ‘be on the lookout for fraternization among the troops.’” Dick tells him while they’re circulating the camp desperately searching for any kind of winter gear. 

“Don’t we want them to be fraternizing? Bonds of brotherhood and all that?”

Dick glances at him and then away. “Brotherly fraternizations not what he’s worried about, actually. More along the lines of the kind of fraternization that apparently comes about when this many young men don’t see any young ladies for this long.” 

“Oh, that.”

He doesn’t want to look Dick in the eyes, grateful for the cover of dark. He feels caught out, even if he doesn’t really have a reason.They’ve never touched each other, not the way Sink is worried about. 

“Yeah. That.” 

They still haven’t talked about it, this thing filling up all the empty spaces in between them.

He has been clinging, and suspects that Dick has too, to the absurd idea that if they never cross that line, if they never find out just how much they could be to each other, it will somehow hurt less when something inevitably happens to one of them.

“Do you think it really matters to the success of the United States Military what the boys are or are not doing in their foxholes?” He asks carefully, still looking straight ahead. 

“I think it hasn’t so far.” 

“Unless they manage to get so distracted in there Hitler himself moseys right across the line, I suppose.”

Dick laughs at that, but sobers quickly. 

“I’m not planning on watching for it and I’m not planning on turning anyone in, should I be unable to avoid knowing about it.” 

Lew swallows and finally makes himself look over. Dick is staring back, steady as ever. 

“Long as no one’s getting hurt or stupid who cares what they do right? There’s a war on. It shouldn't matter, during a war.” 

Dick doesn’t look away. 

“It shouldn't matter any time.” 

It is, Lew thinks, maybe the bravest thing he's seen.

**VIII**.

He signed up for a war because it seemed like an adventure and the perfect way to piss off his father, accomplishing this one thing the old man never had. It was a child’s reason. He never tells anyone but he knows Dick knows and somehow has never thought less of him. He thinks that he'd love Dick for that alone, had he never fallen in love with him for everything else.

**IX**.

He doesn’t want to be a Nixon of the Nixon New Jersey Nixon’s, never really has. When he tells Dick this in the middle of frozen hell in a hole in the ground where they are huddled together too cold to sleep—too cold for anything but whispers in the dark to remind themselves they are still alive—Dick clears his throat and murmurs back,

“You want to run off to Pennsylvania? Be a Winters instead?” 

He says it like a joke but the idea jolts through Lew like the basest kind of truth and he’s almost grateful for the cold for giving his voice a reason to shake around the name in his mouth. 

“Lewis Winters?”

He doesn’t miss the way Dick’s breath catches when he says it but they both pretend he’s just chuckling, that this conversation is as funny as it is ludicrous. 

“Doesn’t sound half bad, Lew.”

“That would make us what? Brothers?”

“Sure.”

But his bare hand is curling around Lew’s neck, the only uncovered part of him, and Lew can’t help but lean down until he’s resting his head in the crook of Dick’s shoulder, can’t help but turn his face in against the hollow of Dick’s throat. Can’t help the way his mouth opens just a little bit against the cold dirty skin.

If he can make any choice anymore, this is what he chooses. 

Dick’s fingers tighten on the nape of his neck.

They don’t talk about it in the morning but the feeling lingers. 

**X**.

He follows Dick to the Bois Jacques and then he stays there for Dick too. Gives up the chance to go home for a month without batting an eye. It’s the right thing to do, it will help the men and he wants to do whatever he can to help but that’s not the real reason he does it, or at least not the whole reason. Mostly he does it because it will help Dick and that’s all he wants to do with whatever time he has left on this frozen wasteland of an earth.

After they choose Peacock to go, but before he goes back to battalion, Dick squeezes him on the shoulder, as best he can with all the layers of cloth between them, and says,

“Thank you. I know you didn’t have to.” 

_But I did, _he thinks. 

He doesn’t think about his family until later, and he doesn’t think about them very long, even then. 

**XI**.

He’s loved people before, of course. He loves his parents, in his way, duty bound to care for them and make them proud. He loves Cathy and what they meant to each other once, before the war; even if he’s never been _in_ love with her, even though it was never going to be the kind of love written about by poets or historians. He loves his daughter in an abstract way, as real as he can love a child he barely knows and probably won’t see again. 

He’s never loved anyone like this. 

Desire so strong his fingers ache with the phantom sensation of Dick’s body underneath his hands, in ways it’s never been but where he knows it would fit perfectly. Devotion that runs so deep it scares him and makes him a better man in turn. 

The men would all follow their captain into battle in any place he commanded and never question if it was right. But Lew? He’d follow Richard Winters anywhere. War or no war.

**XII**. 

He has a child he doesn’t know somewhere across an ocean. Cathy will tell her about him; they’ll be good things or they won’t but it will be the truth. Cathy is a lot of things but a liar has never been one of them.

The funny thing is: he jumps out of a plane and is one of three survivors and thats when he starts to think maybe he’ll make it home for real. The funny thing is: as soon as he let’s himself believe that he might get to go back across the sea and meet his kid and get his dog, thats when he gets the letter.

_‘You don’t want me anymore, either Lewis. I don’t know that you ever really have not for good, not like we were supposed to want each other.’_

She’s right but it’s a hell of a time to hear it. And then she tells him she’s keeping the dog. 

It’s not about the dog except in all the ways it is. It’s _his_ dog. Lew had him from a puppy, before he’d even met Cathy. That dog is the only thing in the house he really knows at all. He never knew Cathy like he should’ve known a wife and that’s how she’d wanted it. He doesn’t know now if he’ll ever know his daughter, if he’ll ever get the chance. But he knew that damn dog. 

‘_I can’t very well leave him on his own you know. And Millie loves him. She must get that from you_.’

Towards the end of the letter she mentions that a friend has come to stay for awhile. Elizabeth, Cathy’s closest friend from Vassar, with enough family money she’s never had to do anything other than exactly what she wants, and now it seems that what she wants is to be with Cathy.

He wonders if Elizabeth likes the dog. He wonders if his daughter likes Elizabeth.

They say the war is all but over so maybe he’ll get to find out soon enough. Or maybe he’ll leave it all alone, let Millie keep the dog that’s been around for far more of her life than he has and keep his distance.

Maybe in a while, when the war has worn off and he feels like he can help shape life instead of just helping to end it he’ll go back to the house in New York and try to be a father. And maybe, as long as he’s dreaming, he’ll bring Dick along too.

**XIII**.

“Stay here for a little while, Nix. Please.” 

It’s the first thing Dick has said since Lew walked in the room and told him Hitler was dead. He knows what Dick is asking, under the surface. 

Stop looking for new ways to get yourself killed. Stop looking for new ways to numb the pain. Come back to yourself. Come back to me. 

“Yeah.” He says, dropping his shoulders a little. “Yeah ok.” 

He has to tell the men the news, but it will keep a little longer.

He joins Dick at the window. The townspeople below are going about the business of repairing their shattered town. He wants to shake them, get up in their faces the way he knows Webster has done a few times already and demand the truth from all these complicit fuckers who keep saying they didn’t know what was happening in their own backyards. 

He wants to break things. 

He wants a goddamn drink. 

“Hell of a week, huh?” Dick says without looking at him.

He wants to be here. Shoulder to shoulder with Dick, going wherever they have to go, together. 

“Hell of a year.”

They don’t speak again after that, Dick doesn’t even look at him as he reaches out blindly, snakes an arm around Lew’s back and grasps at his side, right above his hip, pulling his regulation shirt out of his regulation belt. Lew doesn’t dare breathe and waits to see what Dick will do. Dick moves to the undershirt pulls until it’s untucked too, then slide his fingers up underneath until he’s touching bare skin, just above Lew’s belt loops.They’ve touched each other before, clutching and pressing at skin where they could find it but it’s never been quite this intentional. Lew takes a shaky breath at last and shuffles half a step closer, reaches up with his left hand and finds the thin skin of Dick’s wrist, curls his fingers over it and holds on, keeping Dick pressed against his skin, holding him in place. They stay like that, still not speaking, listening to Beethoven floating on the wind until Lew eventually does have to move away, murmuring apologies and explanations.

He’s still an intelligence officer and he has intel to deliver. 

“Okay.” Dicks says. And then, “Come back.” 

Lew comes back. All his stuff is in a room down the hall and he’s supposed to be there too but it’s not like anyone is going to check, not tonight. 

They fold together into Dick’s bed the same way they folded into Lew’s foxhole and he lets Dick roll him over and wrap him up in his arms, tuck his knees back behind Lew’s and line their bare feet up together. 

They don’t do this, they _can’t_ do this, this thing that’s only one step less dangerous than everything that Lew knows they wish they could do together. But the war is all but over and they’ve earned a moment of peace in the midst of brutal chaos. He finds Dick’s hand again in the dark and holds on as tight as he can. 

He rubs at the base of the third finger. Teetering on the edge of sleep he thinks that If Dick were ever to marry this is where a ring would sit. He thinks about giving Dick a ring himself, staking his claim for the world to see, so everyone they ever met would know. Would understand that they belong to each other.

“I’m not sorry you got demoted.” Dick murmurs against his skin. “I should be. But I’m not. I wanted you back with us every day you were gone.” 

He has things he could say but none of them feel like enough. He pulls Dick’s fingers up to his mouth instead, and presses his lips against them. 

Hope is a dangerous thing in war, but it blooms in his chest anyway. 

_Let us survive_, he thinks. _Let us have this. Let us keep it_.

**XIV**.

He’s not a lifer. Everyone knows it, has always known it. But god help him, if Dick stays in the army, he’s going to find a way to stay too. The idea of Dick being sent off somewhere, getting shot at, while he sits at home doing nothing, knowing nothing, just waiting and waiting and expecting the worst makes him crazy. Makes him want to write a letter of apology to Cathy, tell her he understands a little better now what he put her through her, why she couldn't wait until the end of the war for it to be over._ I can’t be your wife Lewis_, she had written, _and I won’t be your widow_. If Dick dies in a jungle across the world when Lew could have been with him, well. No one will fold up a flag and present it to Lew. No one will know what it would cost him. He will never be a wife, can’t ever be a widow. But he’ll follow the man he loves into a whole new war just in case. 

Unless. Unless maybe he can find a different way. Offer a different solution. Maybe now that he’s followed Dick to the paratroopers, across an ocean, four countries, and all through a war, it can be his turn to lead. Maybe this time Dick will follow him. All the way to a home and a peaceful life they will make together.

**XV**.

His name in Dick’s mouth sounds like _sweetheart_, sounds like _darling_. 

**XVI**.

“So,” Dick says, coming into Lew’s room and shutting the door behind him, “New Jersey, huh?”

“Yeah.” He says, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice. “New Jersey.”

Dick’s smile doesn’t drop but it fades, just a little. “You really want me there? Taking up space in your life back home?”

_Take the space_, he wants to say. _Live in my house, work by my side. My home, my town, my name. Any part of me you want, it’s already yours_.

It’s not a question of if Dick wants it, hasn’t been in ages, it’s just a question of if he’ll let himself have it. Let himself carve out a little bit of peace. 

_Please_, he thinks. _Please be selfish, just this once. Please, please _please. 

“And if I said I wanted to stay in?”

“I’d ask you to put in a good word for me with your higher up buddies because it looks like I’m a career man after all.”

Dick cocks his head, studies him for a moment.

“But if you were choosing? Where would we go.” 

It’s the _We_ that galvanizes him.

“I want to be done with war. I want _you_ to be done with war. I want you to come home with me and I want us to be safe and happy and oceans away from any more of this bullshit, but if you decide that this is where you need to be? Then fuck Dick, show me where I need to sign because you’ve gotta know by now…I want a lot of things, sure, but mostly? Mostly I just love you and I want to be with you, wherever you are. For better or worse.”

He’s broken their cardinal rule and given a name to thing that lives between them. 

_Love_.

He doesn’t regret it. 

“Nix.”

It’s barely a whisper.

Lew looks at him, gobsmacked and beautiful, the surest choice Lew’s ever made. 

“I mean it, Dick.”   
  


A slow smile spreads out across Dick’s face, blinding and happy. 

“Think you know anyone in Nixon who’d put me up?”

Lew feels like his chest is a parachute ripcord and his heart will fly right up and out. 

“Oh, I’m sure we can find someone.”

Dick is across the room in three steps, cups Lew’s face with steady hands. 

“I love you too.” 

“Yeah,” Lew says, rising to meet him, “I had my suspicions. You did let me take first whack at that giant liquor cabinet.” 

And then he’s swallowing Dick’s laughter and finally kissing him. 

**XVII**. 

When the war ends, truly, finally ends, and they’ve finished celebrating with the men and then with each other, Lew gets out of bed, still naked, and pulls out the letter he wrote a year ago, before they jumped into Normandy, stashed at the bottom of his trunk. 

“I just figure. You won’t get it otherwise. No getting rid of me now, Winters.”

Dick beams at him, the sheets pooling around his bare midriff. 

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

Dick gets pretty sappy post-coitus. It’s one of Lew’s favorite new things he’s learned about him in the last weeks

His face becomes almost unbearably fond when he reads the words on the page, as scant as they are, as inadequate as they now seem. He looks up, smiling softly. 

“You want to take me everywhere, huh?”

“I don’t think that’s much a surprise at this point, pal.” 

“Alright then. Take me home.” 

End


End file.
